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Vacant Edmonds-area house damaged in Saturday morning fire

Burnaby fire fighters had a “defensive” fire on their hands this morning after RCMP warned them it might not be safe to go into a vacant building on fire in the Edmonds area.
Police line

Burnaby fire fighters had a “defensive” fire on their hands this morning after RCMP warned them it might not be safe to go into a vacant building on fire in the Edmonds area.

Smoke was coming from the basement of a house at Sixth Street and Wedgewood and could be seen on several sides of the vacant building, explained assistant fire chief Barry Mawhinney.

Although the building was boarded up, the house was known to house people looking for shelter.

“We had some information from RCMP that it might not be safe to enter, so we assessed the situation and chose to fight it as a defensive fire, so we weren’t going in,” he said.

Fire fighters fought the fire from the outside by knocking out windows and taking some boards off.

There were reports that people have been living in the house, so the fire fighters did a visual check from the outside but saw nobody.

Once the fire was largely extinguished and they could get lighting and ventilation into the building, the fire fighters went in.

Mawhinney said they don’t know the cause for the fire, but the investigation will continue on Monday.

The property owner and the RCMP were both on site after the fire, Mawhinney added.